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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

If there was ISP competition then a Verizon customer could switch ISPs if they disagreed with the throttling of Netflix. I would compare it to wireless which never had these net neutrality rules. Is wireless a disaster? It seems like mobile plans are constantly including more data at faster speeds at a cheaper price. Some (all?) of the carriers have various anti-net neutrality policies but consumers at least have the option to pick which set of policies they are willing to agree with.

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Google tried to roll out becoming an ISP and the costs were too great for the potential revenue they'd make back. You should read the article below, but not only is laying new cables down costly (which isn't helped when AT&T and Comcast use the legal system to stop Google), but many Americans buy their internet as part of a package that includes TV and/or phone service too. Meaning to be a serious competitor that can get enough customers to be profitable, you have to also offer TV and phone service to compete with the incumbents.

Read: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/10/26...

If becoming a successful ISP is too difficult for Google... then who is going to be able to do it? Who is going to provide the competition to the monopolies of Comcast, AT&T, and Time Warner?

In a system where preventing a monopoly (and ensuring consumer protection) through competition isn't possible, then that's where regulation is needed.

If you feel there is a better way, I'd be interested to hear about it.

EDIT: See my response about the possibility of Municipal Broadband here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15925827

As a Verizon customer, I'd rather live in this magic world where I can switch ISPs than have net neutrality, but there is no meaningful competition in my building that doesn't suck more.

There is an incredible up front cost for wired infrastructure and even Verizon was unable to turn a profit in the long run. Go pull their earnings reports and look at the performance of their wireline division (phone, internet, tv, etc...). It always lost money except for one year where they turned a million or two profit. That's why they sold it off to frontier who will invest the bare minimum and just run it until it breaks. This cost is what's preventing competition. Providers are betting hard on 5g wireless, it requires much less last mile infrastructure (you don't have to run and maintain connections to people's houses).

That is an argument that screams for municipal ISPs. However half the country has laws that hinder municipal ISPs. This is the exact type of thing I was talking about in my initial post. Why not put the energy that was behind this movement behind allowing and setting up municipal ISPs?

The municipal ISPs I've heard of (from AMA's on Reddit and such) still have to create a peering contract with Comcast/AT&T because those companies own the lines. And granted, RIGHT NOW, it's not that expensive to peer with them. However, it's my understanding the new FCC just relaxed the rules on how much Comcast can charge businesses that need to use their lines???

"The two specific items to be voted on Thursday include a plan to make it easier for broadband providers to charge other businesses higher prices to connect to the main arteries of their networks." - From a pre-vote article. The vote passed. It includes a link to the document. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/technology/ajit%2Dpai%2Df...

Ok, so assuming the monopolies aren't just going to let you steal away their business by creating a municipal ISP that uses their lines... You could try and lay your own lines to get around this. However, that's the exact problem Google ran into. Google required cities pass ordinances that allowed them to move Comcast/AT&T lines on the utility poles so that Google could add their own, but the existing ISPs sued saying that the cities did not have the right and won in court. This means Google had to wait for Comcast techs to come out and move the lines for each and every pole, a process which could take months and the ISPs were dragging out just to make Google's life miserable. This battle over the utility poles is something you can research.

So, assuming we're not better than Google, and that laying new lines will be a regulation nightmare, we're left with the option of renting the existing ISP's lines... of which I already stated I don't think would work either because the same anti-regulation mentality that caused the FCC to deregulate NN has also caused them to deregulate pricing protections for business peering.

If this is the case, why do ISPs spend millions fighting against municipal providers?

I would imagine, and correct me if I'm wrong, but a muni isp that started tomorrow wouldn't have a mountain of legacy copper lines that are quickly deteriorating, and cost a ton of money to maintain and replace. They could start right out of the gate running fiber to the home.

Because it gets results.

There's only one ISP (Xfinity) that provides 25+ mbps in my area (Bay Area). If they decided to throttle, it would be very hard for people in this area to not simply live with it...

Based on my limited knowledge of the ISP market, there's significant barrier of entry in each area for a new ISP or even an existing one like AT&T or Wave G.

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